Saturday, February 02, 2013

JERUSALEM -- After being officially asked to form Israel’s next government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Saturday said he would try to put together as broad a coalition as possible to cope with the country’s domestic and international challenges.

Netanyahu won the endorsement of 82 newly elected lawmakers to form a coalition government following the Jan. 22 election. In accordance with Israeli law, he will have the next three weeks to put together a majority coalition in the 120-member parliament.

The prime minister said his top priorities would be confronting Iran’s nuclear development program, which Western governments believed is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, and restarting Palestinian peace talks. He also faces a $10-billion budget deficit.

Yep, as expected, the LAT couldn't resist bringing up the MSM's obsession with the war process. What matters now is Iran's nuclear menace.

Though Netanyahu did not mention Israel’s airstrike last week against a Syrian weapons convoy near Damascus, he cited the challenges of the region’s instability.

"We will also have to deal with other lethal weapons which are building up in our area and with threats against our cities and our citizens," he said.

Exactly. That too is a real concern now. Netanyahu also called on all factions to join the new coalition:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called on all factions in the 19th Knesset to join a unity government, after accepting President Shimon Peres' invitation to form the coalition on Saturday night.

Netanyahu called on leaders of parties that announced they would not sit in his government to reconsider and stressed the need to form the broadest coalition possible in order to deal with issues the State of Israel is facing, both domestically and internationally.

"We have to put aside what divides us so that we can have peace among ourselves and with our neighbors," he said.

Joint Shas leader Eli Yishai said on Saturday night that he feels Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu prefers to form a new government without Shas.

Speaking on Channel 2, Yishai estimated that there was just a thirty percent chance of Shas joining the next coalition and accused Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid of seeking to “divide the nation and wanting to destroy the world of Torah.”

What about Iran and Ahmedinejad? Has he ever given some thought to their desire to destroy Israel, human lives, Torah scrolls and all? What a disgrace Yishai is being.

But speaking at the ceremony in which President Shimon Peres authorized him to begin forming a government, Netanyahu echoed the language of the haredi parties regarding the central issue of haredi national service enlistment.

The prime minister said that it was important to “significantly increase the share of the burden [of national service],” but that it must be done in a “responsible manner that will bring real change without dividing the nation and causing a civil war.”

Haredi political and rabbinic leaders frequently speak of a compromise on the issue in these terms, usually with the implication that mandating universal enlistment to include full-time yeshiva students would be unacceptable to them.

On Thursday, Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wrote a letter to President Shimon Peres asking him to act as a mediator between the two opposing sides of the haredi enlistment issue.

“I am turning to you with a personal request to use your influence and position to unit the nation and prevent a serious divide in the Jewish people, God forbid, Yosef wrote in his letter to the president.

Why doesn't Yosef comprehend that the only divide is the one he's causing, by keeping up the vehement opposition to army service and employment?

Shas and United Torah Judaism remain opposed to any plan which would set quotas on the number of haredi men able to receive national service exemptions for full-time yeshiva study, but have indicated a degree of flexibility in recent days.

If they really want to be part of this coalition, they'd do well to cooperate, and to start setting better examples. Even if they don't serve in the army per se, they could still at least get jobs.

How are we to assess Naftali Bennett and the Bayit Hayehudi's 12 seat count which quadrupled the representation of the national religious public from the last Knesset?

Until the last week of the election, Lapid was consistently trailing the Labor Party as the second largest leftist party, polling around 8-10 seats. Bayit Yehudi was polling between 12-18 seats. Likud was polling between 31-34 seats. In the end, Likud came out on the low side of the polling numbers. Bayit Yehudi came out on the low side of its polling numbers. And Lapid came out a stunning 10 seats above his average polling position.

The most common, and probably the correct assessment, is that there is a direct correlation between the drop in public support for Bayit Yehudi and the rise in public support for Lapid in the last week to ten days before the election. What does this mean about the interests and hopes of the Israeli electorate? What, if anything does this tell us about the future of Israeli politics?

It is beyond dispute that once the Bayit Yehudi's polling numbers began rising, Netanyahu decided to direct his campaign towards destroying Bennett and the party. Likud assaulted Bennett mercilessly. First Netanyahu attacked him personally. Those initial attacks backfired. Bennett's polling numbers went through the roof. After that, the Likud redirected its attacks against the Bayit Yehudi's slate of Knesset candidates. With the active help of the media, Netanyahu and his campaign advisors sought to portray the list as extremist.

As for the Left, Netanyahu completely ignored Lapid, while directing Likud's attacks, such as they were, against the Labor Party and to a lesser degree, against Tzipi Livni and her party.

The impact of Netanyahu's two-stage assault on Bennett and his party is interesting for what it tells us about the electorate, first and foremost. The personal assault on Bennett backfired because it was so over the top that it disgusted the public. No matter how you slice it, there is no way for anyone to tar and feather Bennett as an extremist. He isn't one and he doesn't look or act like one. It was an utterly unconvincing campaign and it made Netanyahu look vindictive. To the extent that Bennett was able to capture Likud voters, the exodus from Likud to Bayit Yehudi came at this time.

The second phase of Likud's campaign against Bennett was more effective. In attacking Bennett's list Netanyahu was essentially attacking the national religious community. This is the community that the media hates more than any other sector of Israeli society. And so, the likes of Channel 2's Amnon Abramovitch, Dana Weiss and Rena Matzliah were happy to join in this assault. Amazingly, the main target in this campaign was the Bayit Yehudi's Orit Struck, who rose to public prominence through her work as a human rights activist.

But for Likud, this victory was unhelpful. While it no doubt was responsible for the Bayit Yehudi's descent from 18 seats in the most favorable polls to the 12 it ended up winning, it appears that all of the lost seats went not to Likud, but to Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party. The voters who left Likud following Netanyahu's personal assault on Bennett had no interest in coming back.

The question is why? What were voters looking for that they couldn't find in Likud? How could they move from the centrist Right Likud to the hard Right Bayit Yehudi, to the centrist Left Yesh Atid? What is happening to the Israeli public?

Over the years, I have written periodically about the sea change occurring in Israeli society. Israelis are becoming more nationalist, more capitalist, more individualistic, and more interested in their Judaism. This is particularly the case among Israelis under 40 years old. Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett both appealed to this target demographic and for the same reasons.

Unlike his late father Tommy Lapid, who was comfortable making anti-Semitic statements about ultra-Orthodox Jews and was reasonably perceived as an Israeli Archie Bunker, Yair Lapid always couches his opposition to the ultra-Orthodox in nationalist language. As he puts it, it isn't that the ultra-Orthodox are inherently bad. They are bad because they don't work and they don't serve in the army and our taxes go to subsidizing their way of life which rejects our way of life.

To win over nationalist voters, Lapid made Rabbi Shai Piron, an esteemed and serious national religious educator his number two. For people seeking a party that advances causes of Jewish identity and the transformation of the Israeli rabbinate from the fiefdom of non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox rabbis to an institution led by national religious rabbis who better represent the general population, Piron's placement on Lapid's list was a powerful statement of good will. By putting Piron in as his number two, Lapid was also able to blunt attention to the fact that he has radical leftists on his list. For instance, former Shin Bet director Yaacov Peri who cultivated strong business relations with corrupt PLO leaders after he retired from the Shin Bet in 1994 is number 5 on Lapid's Knesset slate.

Both Bennett and Lapid won public support due to their ability to cast themselves as socially tolerant, free market capitalists, who are also strong and committed patriots. When Netanyahu opened his attack on the Bayit Yehudi's candidates' list, the move from the socially moderate and strongly nationalist Bennett to the socially moderate-liberal and relatively nationalist Lapid was a natural one.

That Peri is certainly someone who shouldn't be overlooked. But to say the PLO has corrupt leaders is actually moot because they're much worse than that.

That aside, it's understandable why the Likud shot itself down: they seem to be so concerned about their relations with foreign powers that they really made themselves look like idiots, and at least a few members who ran their campaign are paying for it. As for Netanyahu:

Netanyahu's problem is multifaceted. The headline is that he ran a campaign based on coasting to victory, not on inspiring anyone to vote for him. This is the same campaign Netanyahu ran in 2006 that brought Likud its most stunning defeat. Likud limped to the finish line seven years ago with just 12 mandates. It is the same campaign that won Likud the elections with a paltry 27 Knesset seats in 2009.

This campaign involves doing essentially nothing but negative campaigning. Aside from showing footage of Netanyahu speaking before the US Congress and the UN, and looking at his family album with his wife, the Likud's campaign had almost no positive imagery. It was all about tearing apart its opponents, and particularly the Right and Bennett.

There is a suspicion, still whispered but becoming more and more strident in Likud circles, that Netanyahu's decision to bring Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Beitenu party into Likud owed to Netanyahu's desire to weaken the political Right. The rightist candidates won the Likud primaries. Netanyahu made no effort to hide his distaste for his own list, attacking it the night of the primaries by saying that despite the results, he intended to reappoint his dovish ministers Benny Begin, Dan Meridor and Michael Eitan despite the Likud party membership's utter rejection of their candidacies.

Although Lieberman is characterized, (or caricatured) by the international media as a super-hawk, his record indicates no such thing. In 2006, Lieberman singlehandedly saved Ehud Olmert's government. After the war in Lebanon, with thousands of angry reservists and citizens marching on Jerusalem demanding Olmert's resignation after his incompetent leadership of the war, Lieberman joined the government, and joined it for nothing. He got a phony ministerial portfolio with no executive powers. If it hadn't been for Lieberman, Olmert would have fallen, new elections would have been called and Likud would have returned to power with a large coalition.

Moreover, Lieberman's policies on one of Israel's central security issues--the fate of Judea and Samaria and relations with the Palestinian terrorist groups--are closer to Israel's Left than its Right. Like the Left, Lieberman exaggerates the threat of demographic changes to Israel, while downplaying the threat of Palestinian terrorist groups controlling territory in Israel's heartland. Like the Left, Lieberman favors surrendering strategically vital and historically Jewish territory on demographic lines while ignoring security threats.

I guess that explains a thing or two as well. Truly, Lieberman isn't a very worthy politician either, and is actually asking for any indictment he gets.

Netanyahu owes an apology to Orit Struck in particular, after all the hard work she did to help people persecuted by the left, for adding her his list of targets. And he's going to have to start looking at himself in the mirror and ask himself if he's overconfident of victory to the point of finding nothing better to do than attack his opponents out of non-altruistic reasons.

Glick wrote more about this and her estimations of what's to come that's worth reading as well. Like me, she too hopes that Shas will be told the time has come to turn over a new leaf, and religious reform and military service for all is something I hope will be accomplished by the next government. And there's a lot of improvement the Likud is going to have to accomplish in how they run a public campaign, to say nothing of how they treat their own voter bases, whom they also owe an apology to.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

The newly-appointed military judge in the court-martial of accused Fort Hood mass shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan ruled Wednesday that questions over Hasan’s beard, which have delayed his trial for more than half a year, are a matter for his chain of command and not a legal issue, a move that might prevent future delays.

Col. Tara Osborn, who also Wednesday rejected a defense motion to throw out the death penalty as a potential punishment, said that she will likely set a new trial date at Hasan’s next hearing at the end of February. [...]

Hasan was supposed to go to trial in August, but a military appeals court halted the case because of arguments over his beard, which violates Army grooming standards.

Osborn might have removed a major reason for delay when she rejected a defense motion to allow Hasan to keep his beard for religious reasons. She said that is a decision for Hasan’s commanders, taking a different approach than her predecessor, Col. Gregory Gross, who clashed with Hasan continuously over his beard and was ultimately removed from the case late last year by a military appeals court over the issue.

It was unclear Wednesday whether Hasan’s commanders would seek to have him forcibly shaved.

I think they should, if the queries of clear identification for witnesses come up.

HOUSTON — A military judge Wednesday ruled that an Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly 2009 shooting at Ft. Hood in Texas would still face a possible death sentence at court-martial, potentially barring a guilty plea.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 42, is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder in connection with the rampage at the Army base, the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military installation.

His lawyers had asked the judge, Col. Tara Osborn, to remove the death penalty in the case, setting the stage for a possible guilty plea. A guilty plea, however, is not allowed in military court if the defendant faces a possible death sentence.

Hasan's lawyers probably requested the removal of the death penalty to create a record that could be used on appeal to reverse a conviction or reduce a death sentence to life in prison, said Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel and law professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.

Corn said Hasan could still enter a partial plea, pleading guilty to the lesser offense of unpremeditated murder.

"If he does that, the trial changes radically," Corn said, creating a challenge for military prosecutors and uncertainty for jurors, especially if Hasan takes the stand, expresses remorse and characterizes his guilty plea as a way of taking responsibility.

I don't think he's ever bound to show genuine remorse. How do we know he's not doing this as a way to avoid something he really does deserve? If he really recognizes that adhering to the Religion of Rape was wrong, he'd agree that he does deserve to die for murdering 13 innocents, including a pregnant woman. No matter what that monster says, he should get a one way ticket to hell for what he did, and we must hope that it will happen.

For three days now my Facebook feed has been aflutter with the story that “Israel has admitted” giving Ethiopian immigrants birth control injections without their consent. The story is false, and the ways in which it is false deserve scrutiny and attention as they form part of a worrying pattern.

First, the facts of the story. Tens of thousands of Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel in the last 30 years, most in two large airlifts in 1984 and 1991. Their adjustment to Israeli life has not been perfect by any means, though many have excelled in the army and two Ethiopians are among the MPs in the centrist Yesh Atid party, which overperformed in last week’s election. An investigative Israeli television news show made a splash a few months ago with a report that sought to determine why the fertility rate among Ethiopian women had dropped 20 percent in the last decade. On the surface, this doesn’t seem to be a terribly mysterious phenomenon. Every immigrant group from Africa or Asia that arrives in a developed country sees its fertility rate drop rapidly as standards of living change and, especially, as reigning notions of women’s social roles change too. This happened in Israel with Yemenite immigrants and North African immigrants; it has happened with Arabs living in Israel as well.

What the Israeli television investigation uncovered was 35 Ethiopian women who told of being pressured to take Depo Provera shots — a contraceptive that is active for three months. Women recalled being brusquely told that it was unhealthy to have too many births and some believed that they might not be allowed into Israel unless they had the injection.

It’s not hard to imagine the stress and confusion at an immigrant transit camp and the cultural gaps between the Israeli doctors, who, among other things, were probably administering inoculations as well, and the poor Ethiopian women at one of the most traumatic periods in their lives. Such gaps can only be made worse by the lack of a common language and the very intimate subject matter of reproductive health. This is why, coming on the heels of the broadcast of this report and following its own internal investigation of the matter, the Israeli Ministry of Health issued an unequivocal directive this week not to reissue Depo Provera prescriptions without a very strict standard of informed consent.

This was the first action of official Israel on the matter, the first thing that the state itself actually did regarding this issue, yet that is not how the story has played out. The Independent ran a provocative story about Israel “admitting” that it had forced birth control on Ethiopians, and the ensuing echo is now cited as the background for a Cif piece on forced sterilisation that, implausibly, puts the Israeli “programme” in the context of Israel’s efforts to maintain a Jewish majority as against its growing Arab minority.

There is a very disturbing pattern here. A certain kind of “story” keeps appearing. There was an Israeli investigation of old unregulated practices from the 1990s at the Abu Kabir Pathological Institute in Tel Aviv that found that corneas were harvested from dead IDF soldiers and others without consent, which was twisted in a Guardian article as “Israel admits harvesting Palestinian organs”; the Guardian eventually ran a correction calling the headline a “serious editing error.” A year later, a Lib Dem baroness demanded there be an investigation into organ harvesting by Israeli soldiers conducting a large rescue operation after the Haiti earthquake of January 2010. And now this story.

At this point we can safely say that there is a pattern, and since I don’t believe there is a conspiracy guiding these calumnies, I think we can conclude that the credulity with which these lies are met and the alacrity with which they are spread and retweeted in some quarters in Britain reveal more about attitudes and beliefs here than anything they might tell us about Israel or the Israelis.

Read the rest. So here's another conspiracy cook-up that began with a news report locally, and now some of the worst UK news outlets like the Guardian are milking it for all it's worth. It's a pattern alright, and a very filthy one at that. Always trying to warm up conspiracy theories about Israel, a practice that's also been used against the USA by Chomskyites. But do these creeps ever care when a jihadist attacks a black Jew? Not one bit, and they don't care if Muslims in Britain are terrorizing blacks living there either.

I'm glad to see that someone in the UK has the sense to debunk a smear tactic that was built off of the sad misfortunes of a few. If only there were more like Johnson in Britain, it might be a better place.

Here's something important I'd noticed earlier on French public opinion of the Religion of Rape, and offers some very positive notes on what the French think of Jews by contrast:

PARIS — A survey in one of France’s largest newspapers has found that the country holds largely positive views of Jews and a generally negative opinion of Islam.

The study, published Jan. 24 in the left-leaning Le Monde, reported that a decisive majority of French citizens consider Judaism and Christianity “tolerant,” while an even larger number consider Islam “intolerant.”

According to the survey, carried out by the Ipsos polling institute, 72 percent of the French consider Catholicism either “completely” or “fairly” accepting of other groups, with 66 percent sharing similar attitudes toward Jews. Seventy-four percent see Islam as intolerant.

Published Jan. 24, the survey also found that eight out of 10 French people believe Islam is trying to impose its views on others, with 74 percent describing the religion as “incompatible” with French values.

This is very impressive, as it tells the French public can tell differences and make distinctions.

The UK Sun's listed at least 4 women who've succumbed to Islam and are either dishonest about or buy into all the falsehoods told about it hook, line and sinker. The one to note here is a police officer who converted:

JAYNE KEMP patrols her beat wearing a traditional hijab headscarf and even works extra time after shifts so she can attend Friday prayers at her mosque.

Devout Jayne converted to Islam last April and even plans to change her name to Aminah.

The single mum, who patrols Eccles, Gtr Manchester, as a Police Community Support Officer, says: “I thought Islam was all about women being forced to slave away in the kitchen — but I found out it was about being generous with your time, and patient and respectful of others.

“As I looked into it, I saw similarities with Catholicism and noticed values such as looking after your neighbours and cherishing the elderly, which is something older people say younger people don’t do any more.

“I wasn’t looking for any religion at the time but for every question I had answered about Islam, I had five more. I think I fell in love with it.”

Devoted Jayne even missed out on celebrating Christmas with her son, nine, and daughter, seven. She sent them off to their dad’s and cooked her own meal so it would be halal — the meat slaughtered in the manner prescribed by Sharia law.

And despite the drastic change, Jayne says colleagues at Greater Manchester Police and her family have been supportive. She is now helping to design a regulation police hijab and tunic — as one has never been needed before.

Jayne says: “I was worried about what my colleagues would think but they have been so understanding.

There are two conclusions one can draw here: either she believes the taqqiya, or, she's spreading it. Wow, she's even separated from her hubby and children?!? Does she consider her newfound religion even more important than her own family? Good grief.

And there's an example of how terrible an influence Islam has in Britain, and in plenty of other places where it's prevalent.

Islamic scholars agree that Sharia (Islamic law) embraces the law, the state, religion and politics. In fact, Islam is not a religion in any Western sense of the word. It is a complete ideological system. Islam has military, political, legal, economic, social, and religious components. Islam primarily is a political and military doctrine, dedicated to world conquest that wears the cloak of religion. The religious cloak is the cover and the Trojan horse it uses to infiltrate the cultures, nations and civilizations it seeks to destroy and replace with Islamic totalitarianism.

Scholar and former Muslim Ibn Warraq says, “Islam itself is a fascist ideology. Islamic fundamentalism is a totalitarian construct derived by Muslim jurists from the fundamental and defining texts of Islam [Qur’an, ahadith, Sira].” Like Marxism and Nazism, Islam is a brutal, oppressive totalitarian ideology that is completely incompatible with democracy, individual liberty, and individualism.

Murder is a core Islamic “value.” Islam commands Muslims to kill non-Muslims. It is their religious duty. Surah 9:5, 9:29, and other Qur’anic verses command Muslims to, “Fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them…” More than 100 times the Qur’an calls Muslims to jihad until the supremacy of Islam over the entire world is complete. Islam is a system that institutionalizes war, conquest, imperialism and subjugation as its normative behaviors.

In his 1955 book “War and Peace in the Law of Islam,” internationally renowned Iraqi scholar of Sharia, Majid Khadduri explained that, “the Islamic state … sought to establish Islam as the dominant reigning ideology over the entire world. The jihad was therefore employed as an instrument for both the universalization of religion and the establishment of an imperial world state.”

Hatred is a core Islamic “value.” Hatred is built into Islam. Former Muslim Walid Shoebat says, “Hatred of Jews was my education, what I was taught each day by teachers and parents and the entire community. I knew nothing else.”

The Qur’an says Allah hates non-Muslims and sees them as worse than animals. He compares non-Muslims with dogs, pigs, apes. (Q8:55, Q25:44, Q7:176). Muslims and non-Muslims can never be equal (Q39:9; also Q6:50, 28:61, 32:19, 35:19-22, 38:28, 40:58, 45:21, 59:20, 67:22, 68:35). Muslims are the “best of peoples” (Q3:110); Unbelievers are the “vilest of creatures” (98:6). The Pagans are unclean (Q9:28).

Housed on the Hudson Institute website, The Center for Religious Freedom produced a report published in 2005 entitled, “Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fill American Mosques.” Here are a few quotes from the Saudi material: “Be dissociated from the infidels, hate them for their religion, do not admire them, and always oppose them in every way according to Islamic law. It is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews. It is a Muslim’s religious duty to cultivate enmity between oneself and unbelievers.”

Muhammad said, “War is deceit.” Like other totalitarian ideologies, lies and deceit are common tools.

- “Lying and deceit are a part of the Islamic mind-set.” (Former Muslim, former Al-Azhar University professor, Dr Mark Gabriel)

- “Muslims have every right to lie and to deceive their adversaries, and a promise made to a non-Muslim can be broken whenever necessary.” (Amir Taheri)

- “it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible.” (al-Ghazali, 1058-1111)

According to the authoritative Arabic text, Al-Taqiyya Fi Al-Islam:

- “Taqiyya [deception] is of fundamental importance in Islam.

- Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practices it.

- We can go so far as to say that the practice of taqiyya is mainstream in Islam.

- Taqiyya is very prevalent in Islamic politics, especially in the modern era.”

There are other forms of Muslim deceit, such as tawriya (creative lying) and different meanings for the same words. In Islam, “freedom” means perfect submission to Allah and Sharia. Peace means no opposition, a society under Sharia. Same with “terrorism”; they call it “resistance”. Islamic “resistance” includes mass-murder attacks against people

Since the sacred goal of jihad is to make Islam supreme in this world, every lie told to achieve that goal is not only permitted, but sanctified. Obviously it is good for Islam that the infidel should be kept ignorant of their true intentions, which leads us to the subject at hand.

Muslims are very shrew[d] when it comes to giving gullible infidels a sanitized, revisionist version of Islam, which has nothing to do with reality. Islam and its apologists have been very successful in placing blatantly false materials before the American public. Our media is filled with Islamic apologists who regularly mislead us. PBS has broadcast numerous “documentaries” filled with falsehoods that deceive viewers into thinking Islam is not violent. PBS is a shill for Islam. Leftists and Islam’s apologist dominate our universities. Factual and historical information is blocked. Students are given a false understanding of Islam and its intentions.

Although I have neither read the books nor seen the DVD NEH is attempting to place in our community colleges, based on the titles of some of the books, I seriously doubt they address the aforementioned realities of Islam. Nor would I expect them to include the truth concerning Islam’s view of human rights (rejected), freedom of speech (not tolerated), religious freedom (not tolerated), oppression of women (including female genital mutilation), the plight of children (e.g., child marriages – a euphemism for child rape), slavery and slaveholding (still prevalent in Islam), or Islam being totally incompatible with, and hostile to democracy. By the way, Dr. Thomas Sowell did the research and found that Islam has enslaved 25 million black Africans from the seventh century until the present day. Islam’s enslavement of Africans continues today.

And yet nothing is done about this modern day slavemongering.

This letter is very informative about the dangers imposed not only by Islamofascism, but by it's apologists too.

Paris says it will deport a number of radical religious imams to tackle extremism in Europe and "global jihadism". French Interior Minister warned the eviction would happen "in the coming days".

­"We will expel all these imams, all these foreign preachers who denigrate women, who hold views that run counter to our values and who say there is a need to combat France,” AFP quoted foreign minister Manuel Valls as saying.

Speaking at the conference in Brussels, he stressed that the move will affect “Salafist groupings, who are involved in the political process, whose aim is to monopolize cultural associations, the school system."

Radical Islam, the key topic at an international conference in Belgium, is a pressing issue for France especially after Mohamed Merah the al-Qaeda inspired murderer, dubbed the Scooter Killer, shot dead three soldiers, three Jewish schoolchildren, and a rabbi in March 2012.

The step to exile these vulgarians is an important one, for combating violent jihad in and around France.

The New York Times has more on the Haredi "modesty squads" that cause so many problems for their own communities, and heaven forfend we think it doesn't affect outsiders too:

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

I can't begin to describe how hilarious this part is. How can a bald piece of dull plastic or cellophane be sexually arousing, as the scoundrel who intimidated the woman claimed? It's as dumb a claim as it sounds.

“The man said, ‘Do the neighborhood a favor and take it out of the window,’ ” the store’s manager recalled. “ ‘We’re trying to safeguard our community.’ ”

In many neighborhoods, a store owner might shrug off such a call. But on Lee Avenue, the commercial spine of Hasidic Williamsburg, the warning carried an implied threat — comply with community standards or be shunned. It is a potent threat in a neighborhood where shadowy, sometimes self-appointed modesty squads use social and economic leverage to enforce conformity.

The owner wrestled with the request for a day or two, but decided to follow it. “We can sell it without mannequins, so we might as well do what the public wants,” the owner told the manager, who asked not to be identified because of fear of reprisals for talking.

As I've come to realize, thanks to the research I've been doing, if God forbid an act of vandalism or assault took place because they didn't comply, they might not report it to the police because they're so afraid of being shunned for being "mosrim", as though being Jewish/Haredi gives one the full right to do as they please. Such notions, naturally, are shameful.

The groups have long been a part of daily life in the ultra-Orthodox communities that dot Brooklyn and other corners of the Jewish world. But they sprang into public view with the trial of Nechemya Weberman, a prominent member of the Satmar Hasidim in Brooklyn, who last week was sentenced to 103 years in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing a young girl sent to him for counseling.

That's the good part, of course, that now, "modesty squads" are something the non-Jewish public can learn more about, and how they've long been a thorn in the side of people in some of the most extreme Haredi communities, no matter what the color of character the people targeted is. And lest we forget, Weberman was a leader of one of these gangs.

The details were startling: a witness for Mr. Weberman’s defense, Baila Gluck, testified that masked men representing a modesty committee in the Hasidic village of Kiryas Joel, N.Y., 50 miles northwest of New York City, broke into her bedroom about seven years ago and confiscated her cellphone.

And yet she testified in his defense! One of the articles I read did quote someone commenting that she's still under his influence. Very sad.

The Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, who prosecuted the Weberman case, has now received allegations that members of a modesty committee forced their way into a home in the borough, confiscating an iPad and computer equipment deemed inappropriate for Orthodox children, officials say. Allegations have also surfaced that a modesty committee threatened to publicly shame a married man who was having an affair unless he paid the members money for what they described as therapy.

“They operate like the Mafia,” said Rabbi Allan Nadler, director of the Jewish studies program at Drew University in Madison, N.J.

Rabbi Nadler, who testified at Mr. Weberman’s trial, said that modesty committees did not have addresses, stationery or business cards, and that few people seemed to know where their authority originated, though it was doubtful, he said, that they could continue operating without the tacit blessings of rabbinical leaders.

“They walk into a store and say it would be a shame if your window was broken or you lost your clientele,” he said. “They might tell the father of a girl who wears a skirt that’s too short and he’s, say, a store owner: ‘If you ever want to sell a pair of shoes, speak to your daughter.’”

In Brooklyn, Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who has represented the heavily Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park for 30 years, said that he had never met a modesty committee member, but that “there are a lot of independent operators that believe they are protecting God and have to do this kind of stuff, and that’s sickening and gives us all a black eye.”

“If you want to advocate modesty,” he added, “do your thing, but when you stuff it down my throat physically, that undermines us and hurts us.”

And it especially hurts God. If there's anything worse than a saint, it's someone who thinks he/she is, and acts in the name of the Lord to enforce beliefs upon people over trivial matters like how they dress, whether modestly or skimpily, a problem that's still prevalent in some Haredi neighborhoods around the country.

While many of the rules of conduct are announced on Yiddish broadsides posted on trees, lampposts and walls, residents of Hasidic neighborhoods say some store owners have received rough verbal warnings from a modesty committee to stop selling magazines that carry photographs considered too revealing, or articles that dispute the Satmar Hasidim’s belief that Israel should not have existed until the Messiah’s arrival.

Another something to tell what kind of horrific beliefs the Satmar mindset has on Israel. I'm amazed the NYT was willing to acknowledge that. As impressive it is that they're willing to bring up cases like these, it's sad that they're not willing to do the same with Islamic communities, where the situation is still far worse for women and girls in particular.

...in places like Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the issue of non-compliance with ultra-Orthodox modesty rules has crept into neighboring secular areas. In 2009, Hasidic South Williamsburg community members successfully rallied to block a bike lane that brought outside bicyclists — specifically, women wearing shorts — through the neighborhood.

“I have to admit, it’s a major issue, women passing through here in that dress code,” Simon Weisser, a member of Community Board 1 in Williamsburg-Greenpoint, told the New York Post.

“It bothers me, and it bothers a lot of people.”

What a disgrace. Doing whatever they can to make life difficult for people outside their horrid belief system, a problem that also exists here too. A major example of how the Satmar are such pro-segregation/insular types.

A plurality of the public and an overwhelming majority of Yesh Atid voters want Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to form a coalition without haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, a Smith Research poll conducted this week found.

[...] Thirty-eight percent preferred the coalition excluding haredim, 17% wanted the right-wing option, 15% the wide coalition and 12% called for excluding Bayit Yehudi. Among those polled, 18% did not have an opinion.

Among Yesh Atid voters, 68% preferred a coalition without the haredi parties. Their second choice was a broad coalition.

[...] Among supporters of Shas, 52% preferred a right-wing government without Yesh Atid, 29% wanted to exclude Bayit Yehudi, 10% called for a broad coalition, and only five percent said they backed a coalition without their own party.

I think that's telling something about just what kind of Haredis might've voted for Shas - the ones who oppose army service. The numbers telling how many oppose the inclusion of Jewish Home in the coalition are also eyebrow raising, since they suggest that a significant number of Shas voters resent their pro-service positions.

The article also tells that Shas and UTJ, bewilderingly enough, are trying to get Jewish Home to back their positions against army service. Oh good grief. Might I suggest that, if they were to encourage their public to at least seek legitimate employment more seriously, they could find it easier to get around the military matters, if it's really that much of a problem for them?

For now, I want to say that I too would rather those parties remain on the outskirts of the coalition, particularly Shas, based on their collaboration with the Oslo agreement architects, which Aryeh Deri, now back in the Knesset, had a hand in allowing. He most definitely should not be a minister, and could very easily cause problems if he does become one again.

PARIS- French police arrested two people on Tuesday in the hunt for accomplices of an al Qaida-inspired gunman who went on a killing spree in March, a judicial source said.

The two men aged 29 and 30 were detained in southwest France, where gunman Mohamed Merah killed three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish children before he was shot dead by elite police forces besieging his home.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday he did not believe Merah had been a "lone wolf", but had received help from overseas and been radicalized in France.

One of the gunman's brothers, Abdelkader Merah, was arrested on the day police surrounded his brother's apartment in the city of Toulouse in March. He denies being an accomplice in the killings but remains in detention during what has been deemed an anti-terrorism inquiry.

France's top anti-terrorism judge said earlier this week it needs more robust local policing, better intelligence sharing and the ability to infiltrate small radical Islamist groups if it hopes to fight new security threats at home in the aftermath of the Merah affair.

I wonder how many of these filth live on welfare? That's one of the gravest mistakes Sarkozy made when he was president, if he made no effort to cease welfare checks to creepy monsters like those.

Besides becoming more like their “Agudah” counterparts in the United States, thousands of Israeli Haredim also have enlisted in special fields in the IDF, belying accusations that they are “draft dodgers.”

“The move from the yeshiva to the university is based on economics, not ideology,” explains Israeli journalist Yisrael Gellis.

He told The Jewish Press, “Young married yeshiva students reached the conclusion they have to work to support their families.

“Approximately 25,000 Haredim have been learning as far back as five years ago, but the media always disparage them and do not report the new trend.”

The “Open University,” which allows students to learn at home, has attracted more than 600 Haredim, according to Gellis. Significantly, 150 of them are from what Gellis calls one of the most “fanatic” Haredi sects. Yeshiva rabbis have encouraged the new trend but “without force,” Gellis said.

I'm guessing many of those who do encourage them to go the positive route and seek employment may want to remain anonymous so's not to get in any potential trouble with the more fanatical rabbis who are against it. It's understandable.

Well, good to see that something's being done right, and if it continues, then we could be getting somewhere.

Betar Jerusalem owner Arkadi Gaydamak vowed not to yield to the racist minority of his club’s supporters on Sunday as the sports world and senior ministers alike condemned the anti-Muslim bigotry displayed by fans at Teddy Stadium during Saturday’s 1-0 defeat to Bnei Yehuda.

The Betar supporters reacted angrily to Gaydamak’s announcement that the club plans to sign Muslims Dzhabrail Kadiyev and Zaur Sadayev from Chechen club Terek Grozny, raising banners reading: “Betar [will be] pure forever” and “70 years of values,” with numerous fans also voicing their opposition to Muslim players joining the club by singing anti-Arab chants.

A Muslim player, Nigerian defender Ibrahim Nadalla, was on the team briefly in 2005 but left after experiencing consistent hostility from its supporters. [...]

Umm al-Fahm of the National League plans to bring 2,500 fans to the potentially volatile showdown at Teddy and coach Samir Issa promised his players would leave the pitch should Betar fans deride Muhammad.

Police at the match on Saturday arrested three supporters on suspicion of incitement, with two of them being banned on Sunday from entering stadiums until the end of the 2013/14 season.

“I was shocked by the racism displayed in the Betar Jerusalem stands yesterday against having Muslim or Arab players on the team,” Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Sunday.

While I won't say that people calling for Beitar to be "pure" are doing the right thing, and if they voiced anti-Arab chants, that was definitely bad, I will say that if Yaalon is going to infer that this was literally "racism" rather than anti-religious sentiment is a very poor way to conduct an argument. I have nothing against adding some Arabic players to the team, but I do have a problem if they're going to adhere to Islam, that's for sure. Of course, these 2 players Gaydamak - who's got a very questionable character - wants to include on the team, are not even Arabic but rather Chechnyan, so I'm not sure how anyone perceived this backlash as "racism" in that framework.

If the fans don't like the choices, they shouldn't even be attending the games or paying their money for them. Why they're not following that simple advice is beyond me.

A controversial cartoon depicting Bibi Netanyahu building a wall with mortar of blood is beyond disgusting. Not only does it demonstrate the prejudice of the artist and his comrades - it turns the truth on its head. The Wall saves innocent lives while its construction - to my knowledge - did not kill anyone!

Monday, January 28, 2013

The Times of India's reporting that the author of the Satanic Verses has been invited by some Muslim scholars in India to a debate. Will he accept, and will they respect his free speech? Well, it says here:

Many at the seminar, organized by Wahdat-e-Islami Hind, an NGO not known for its charitable views on Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen, were surprised when senior lawyer and member of AIMPLB Yusuf Muchala proposed: "Instead of opposing his visit to Mumbai, let us invite Rushdie to this city and answer our questions. If he has the guts he should explain to us why he wrote such a blasphemous book."

Muchalla, who heads the personal law board's legal cell, also appealed to the Muslims not to resort to violent protests against Rushdie.

If Rushdie accepts the invitation, he should also bring up some of the most violent verses in the Koran as well as Mohammed's marriage to the 9-year-old Aisha and ask if those are acceptable beliefs. And any meeting they have will need to be held in a place where there's tight security.

SEVARE, Mali (AP) — Islamist extremists torched a library containing historic manuscripts in Timbuktu, the mayor said Monday, as French and Malian forces closed in on Mali's fabled desert city.

Ousmane Halle said he heard about the burnings early Monday.

"It's truly alarming that this has happened," he told The Associated Press by telephone from Mali's capital, Bamako, on Monday. "They torched all the important ancient manuscripts. The ancient books of geography and science. It is the history of Timbuktu, of its people."

That's Islamofascism for you. This is one of their leading examples of how they spite other people's histories and developments, all for the sake of jihad.

To be madly in love might be exactly that—madness. The term “lovesick” is surprisingly accurate, claims a cover story in this month’s National Geographic magazine, citing research published over the last several years. [RTWT]

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."

The latest eruption of citizen policing began about three weeks ago in the small, mountainous town of Ayutla de los Libres, in Guerrero State, when residents picked up rifles and machetes and arrested at least three dozen people they said the authorities had failed to apprehend.

Since then, the practice has spread to other areas of the state, with movement leaders and local human rights officials saying more than a hundred small communities are now patrolling themselves.

Last week, local news media reported that indigenous communities in Jalisco State were also planning their own citizen police forces.

THIS IS NOT VIGILANTISM; THIS IS SELF-DEFENSE.

AFTER THEY KILL THE BAD DRUGGIES THEY SHOULD GO AFTER THE BAD POLITICIANS!